In European Conf. on Computer Vision, (ECCV), pages: 285-298, Springer-Verlag, September 2010 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Detection, tracking, segmentation and pose estimation of people in monocular images are widely studied. Two-dimensional models of the human body are extensively used, however, they are typically fairly crude, representing the body either as a rough outline or in terms of articulated geometric primitives. We describe a new 2D model of the human body contour that combines an underlying naked body with a low-dimensional clothing model. The naked body is represented as a Contour Person that can take on a wide variety of poses and body shapes. Clothing is represented as a deformation from the underlying body contour. This deformation is learned from training examples using principal component analysis to produce eigen clothing. We find that the statistics of clothing deformations are skewed and we model the a priori probability of these deformations using a Beta distribution. The resulting generative model captures realistic human forms in monocular images and is used to infer 2D body shape and pose under clothing. We also use the coefficients of the eigen clothing to recognize different categories of clothing on dressed people. The method is evaluated quantitatively on synthetic and real images and achieves better accuracy than previous methods for estimating body shape under clothing.

We propose a method for deblurring of spatially variant object motion. A principal challenge of this problem is how to estimate the point spread function (PSF) of the spatially variant blur. Based on the projective motion blur model of, we present a blur estimation technique that jointly utilizes a coded exposure camera and simple user interactions to recover the PSF. With this spatially variant PSF, objects that exhibit projective motion can be effectively de-blurred. We validate this method with several challenging image examples.

While research on articulated human motion and pose estimation has progressed rapidly in the last few years, there has been no systematic quantitative evaluation of competing methods to establish the current state of the art. We present data obtained using a hardware system that is able to capture synchronized video and ground-truth 3D motion. The resulting HumanEva datasets contain multiple subjects performing a set of predefined actions with a number of repetitions. On the order of 40,000 frames of synchronized motion capture and multi-view video (resulting in over one quarter million image frames in total) were collected at 60 Hz with an additional 37,000 time instants of pure motion capture data. A standard set of error measures is defined for evaluating both 2D and 3D pose estimation and tracking algorithms. We also describe a baseline algorithm for 3D articulated tracking that uses a relatively standard Bayesian framework with optimization in the form of Sequential Importance Resampling and Annealed Particle Filtering. In the context of this baseline algorithm we explore a variety of likelihood functions, prior models of human motion and the effects of algorithm parameters. Our experiments suggest that image observation models and motion priors play important roles in performance, and that in a multi-view laboratory environment, where initialization is available, Bayesian filtering tends to perform well. The datasets and the software are made available to the research community. This infrastructure will support the development of new articulated motion and pose estimation algorithms, will provide a baseline for the evaluation and comparison of new methods, and will help establish the current state of the art in human pose estimation and tracking.

A structured-light technique can greatly simplify the problem of shape recovery from images. There are currently two main research challenges in design of such techniques. One is handling complicated scenes involving texture, occlusions, shadows, sharp discontinuities, and in some cases even dynamic change; and the other is speeding up the acquisition process by requiring small number of images and computationally less demanding algorithms. This paper presents a “one-shot” variant of such techniques to tackle the aforementioned challenges. It works by projecting a static grid pattern onto the scene and identifying the correspondence between grid stripes and the camera image. The correspondence problem is formulated using a novel graphical model and solved efficiently using loopy belief propagation. Unlike prior approaches, the proposed approach uses non-deterministic geometric constraints, thereby can handle spurious connections of stripe images. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified on a variety of complicated real scenes.

An innovative pain management system, namely Epione, is presented here. Epione deals with three main types of pain, i.e., acute pain, chronic pain, and phantom limb pain. In particular, by using facial expression analysis, Epione forms a dynamic pain meter, which then triggers biofeedback and augmented reality-based destruction scenarios, in an effort to maximize patient's pain relief. This unique combination sets Epione not only a novel pain management approach, but also a means that provides an understanding and integration of the needs of the whole community involved i.e., patients and physicians, in a joint attempt to facilitate easing of their suffering, provide efficient monitoring and contribute to a better quality of life.

Post-amputation sensation often translates to the feeling of severe pain in the missing limb, referred to as phantom limb pain (PLP). A clear and rational treatment regimen is difficult to establish, as long as the underlying pathophysiology is not fully known. In this work, an innovative PLP management system is presented, as a module of an holistic computer-mediated pain management environment, namely Epione. The proposed Epione-PLP scheme is structured upon advanced facial expression analysis, used to form a dynamic pain meter, which, in turn, is used to trigger biofeedback and augmented reality-based PLP distraction scenarios. The latter incorporate a model of the missing limb for its visualization, in an effort to provide to the amputee the feeling of its existence and control, and, thus, maximize his/her PLP relief. The novel Epione-PLP management approach integrates edge-technology within the context of personalized health and it could be used to facilitate easing of PLP patients' suffering, provide efficient progress monitoring and contribute to the increase in their quality of life.

Traditional grid and list representations of image search results are the dominant interaction paradigms that users face on a daily basis, yet it is unclear that such paradigms are well-suited for experiences where the user‟s task is to browse images for leisure, to discover new information or to seek particular images to represent ideas. We introduce ImageFlow, a novel image search user interface that ex-plores a different alternative to the traditional presentation of image search results. ImageFlow presents image results on a canvas where we map semantic features (e.g., rele-vance, related queries) to the canvas‟ spatial dimensions (e.g., x, y, z) in a way that allows for several levels of en-gagement – from passively viewing a stream of images, to seamlessly navigating through the semantic space and ac-tively collecting images for sharing and reuse. We have implemented our system as a fully functioning prototype, and we report on promising, preliminary usage results.

Layered models are a powerful way of describing natural scenes containing smooth surfaces that may overlap and occlude each other. For image motion estimation, such models have a long history but have not achieved the wide use or accuracy of non-layered methods. We present a new probabilistic model of optical flow in layers that addresses many of the shortcomings of previous approaches. In particular, we define a probabilistic graphical model that explicitly captures: 1) occlusions and disocclusions; 2) depth ordering of the layers; 3) temporal consistency of the layer segmentation. Additionally the optical flow in each layer is modeled by a combination of a parametric model and a smooth deviation based on an MRF with a robust spatial prior; the resulting model allows roughness in
layers. Finally, a key contribution is the formulation of the layers using an image dependent hidden field prior based on recent models for static scene segmentation. The method achieves state-of-the-art results on the Middlebury benchmark and produces meaningful scene segmentations as well as detected occlusion regions.

Assumptions of brightness constancy and spatial smoothness underlie most optical flow estimation methods. In contrast to standard heuristic formulations, we learn a statistical model of both brightness constancy error and the spatial properties of optical flow using image sequences with associated ground truth flow fields. The result is a complete probabilistic model of optical flow. Specifically, the ground truth enables us to model how the assumption of brightness constancy is violated in naturalistic sequences, resulting in a probabilistic model of "brightness inconstancy". We also generalize previous high-order constancy assumptions, such as gradient constancy, by modeling the constancy of responses to various linear filters in a high-order random field framework. These filters are free variables that can be learned from training data. Additionally we study the spatial structure of the optical flow and how motion boundaries are related to image intensity boundaries. Spatial smoothness is modeled using a Steerable Random Field, where spatial derivatives of the optical flow are steered by the image brightness structure. These models provide a statistical motivation for previous methods and enable the learning of all parameters from training data. All proposed models are quantitatively compared on the Middlebury flow dataset.

This paper presents design and development of a six legged
robot with a total of 12 degrees of freedom, two in each
limb and then an implementation of 'obstacle and undulated
terrain-based' probabilistic roadmap method for motion
planning of this hexaped which is able to negotiate large
undulations as obstacles. The novelty in this implementation
is that, it doesnt require the complete view of the robot's
configuration space at any given time during the traversal. It generates a map of the area that is in visibility range and finds the best suitable point in that field of view to make it as the next node of the algorithm. A particular category of undulations which are small enough are automatically 'run-over' as a part of the terrain and not considered as obstacles.
The traversal between the nodes is optimized by taking the
shortest path and the most optimum gait at that instance
which the hexaped can assume. This is again a novel
approach to have a real time gait changing technique to
optimize the travel time. The hexaped limb can swing in the
robot's X-Y plane and the lower link of the limb can move
in robot's Z plane by an implementation of a four-bar
mechanism. A GUI based server 'Yellow Ladybird'
eventually which is the name of the hexaped, is made for
real time monitoring and communicating to it the final
destination co-ordinates.

We propose a method to estimate the detailed 3D shape of a person from images of that person wearing clothing. The approach exploits a model of human body shapes that is learned from a database of over 2000 range scans. We show that the parameters of this shape model can be recovered independently of body pose. We further propose a generalization of the visual hull to account for the fact that observed silhouettes of clothed people do not provide a tight bound on the true 3D shape. With clothed subjects, different poses provide different constraints on the possible underlying 3D body shape. We consequently combine constraints across pose to more accurately estimate 3D body shape in the presence of occluding clothing. Finally we use the recovered 3D shape to estimate the gender of subjects and then employ gender-specific body models to refine our shape estimates. Results on a novel database of thousands of images of clothed and "naked" subjects, as well as sequences from the HumanEva dataset, suggest the method may be accurate enough for biometric shape analysis in video.

The analysis of extra-cellular neural recordings typically begins with careful spike sorting and all analysis
of the data then rests on the correctness of the resulting spike trains. In many situations this is
unproblematic as experimental and spike sorting procedures often focus on well isolated units. There is
evidence in the literature, however, that errors in spike sorting can occur even with carefully collected
and selected data. Additionally, chronically implanted electrodes and arrays with fixed electrodes cannot
be easily adjusted to provide well isolated units. In these situations, multiple units may be recorded and
the assignment of waveforms to units may be ambiguous. At the same time, analysis of such data may
be both scientifically important and clinically relevant. In this paper we address this issue using a novel
probabilistic model that accounts for several important sources of uncertainty and error in spike sorting.
In lieu of sorting neural data to produce a single best spike train, we estimate a probabilistic model of
spike trains given the observed data. We show how such a distribution over spike sortings can support
standard neuroscientific questions while providing a representation of uncertainty in the analysis. As a
representative illustration of the approach, we analyzed primary motor cortical tuning with respect to
hand movement in data recorded with a chronic multi-electrode array in non-human primates.We found
that the probabilistic analysis generally agrees with human sorters but suggests the presence of tuned
units not detected by humans.

Computer-mediated connections between human motor cortical neurons and assistive devices
promise to improve or restore lost function in people with paralysis. Recently, a pilot clinical
study of an intracortical neural interface system demonstrated that a tetraplegic human was
able to obtain continuous two-dimensional control of a computer cursor using neural activity
recorded from his motor cortex. This control, however, was not sufficiently accurate for
reliable use in many common computer control tasks. Here, we studied several central design
choices for such a system including the kinematic representation for cursor movement, the
decoding method that translates neuronal ensemble spiking activity into a control signal and
the cursor control task used during training for optimizing the parameters of the decoding
method. In two tetraplegic participants, we found that controlling a cursor’s velocity resulted
in more accurate closed-loop control than controlling its position directly and that cursor
velocity control was achieved more rapidly than position control. Control quality was further
improved over conventional linear filters by using a probabilistic method, the Kalman filter, to
decode human motor cortical activity. Performance assessment based on standard metrics used
for the evaluation of a wide range of pointing devices demonstrated significantly improved
cursor control with velocity rather than position decoding.

Our goal is to understand the principles of Perception, Action and Learning in autonomous systems that successfully interact with complex environments and to use this understanding to design future systems